College Compass Start free →

Same income. One school costs $4,478 a year.
Another costs $32,766.

What families at your income actually paid at 3,188 colleges, and your student's real admit odds at 1,791. Five minutes to start. $99 for the season.

See your student's numbers — free or open a sample plan →
Measured · federal data Income-band prices · NPT4 Conflict-free · paid by parents

Illustrations use one real profile — GPA 3.7, SAT 1320, a measured-rigor NJ high school. The $4,478 and $32,766 are what families earning $75–110k actually paid at Princeton and NYU, per federal College Scorecard reporting.

What you get

Nine questions. Five minutes.

From the intake — which high school?
Ridgewood High School — Ridgewood, NJrigor 86 · measured
The Pingry School — Basking Ridge, NJrigor 93 · school-reported

Odds that show their math.

Why 71% — every point auditable
Published in-state rate · Rutgers' own CDS62
GPA 3.7 vs 3.41 typical admit+10.8
SAT 1320 vs ~1410 median−12.4
School rigor 88 · measured+6.9
Early Decision+5.0

The paperwork each school actually requires.

Verified from the schools' own pages — top 50 publics
UVA — CSS Profilerequired · via IDOC
Virginia Tech — transcriptSTARS · own deadline
Michigan — merit cutoffNov 1
UT Austin — essays2 school-specific

Merit, from the school's own filings.

No-need freshmen who got merit — Common Data Set, H2A
Tennessee53% · avg $6,872
UNC Chapel Hill9% · avg $7,233
UC Berkeley6% · avg $16,030
UT Austinreports none

Prices for your income — not the average.

Rutgers — at your band ($48–75k)
Sticker price$61,000 / yr
Families at your band paid$21,800 / yr
Princeton, same band$1,217 / yr
Browse real prices by income — tap a school, it lands on your plan →

An advisor that names the one next thing.

The advisor's note — rewritten as the plan changes

Maya's list holds 2 likely admits against a floor of three, and the first deadline is Nov 1. One move fixes it.

Every Monday, by emailthe next 14 days of deadlines
In spring: award letters decodedgifts vs loans

Most families who skip the FAFSA assume they earn too much (NCES) — the honest comparison

Free tools (Niche, CollegeVine…)College Compass
Who pays themColleges recruiting your studentYou. $99, once
The price shownSticker, or the all-family averageYour income band's real number
The admit oddsOne undisclosed scoreThe published rate — split by residency at 42 publics — every point shown
Paperwork & deadlinesYour spreadsheetPer-school gotchas, verified · a Monday digest
Your student's dataThe product being soldNever sold, never shared

That first row isn't an accusation — it's their published business model. Appily (which absorbed Cappex) states in its own site footer that it is a data broker, with a "do not sell my information" opt-out beside it. Niche sells colleges paid Premium Profiles and runs a Direct Admissions program with 150+ college partners. CollegeVine says it partners with colleges that pay to join its ecosystem to reach students. College Raptor was acquired by a student lender. All four are genuinely useful tools. But free is never free — somebody is paying, and it's worth knowing who before you hand over a transcript.

Earning above $110k? Different question, same five minutes

Make too much for aid? Then the question is what you'd borrow.

Above $110k the federal discounts thin out — at most state schools your price is close to sticker, and this site will say so to your face, school by school. What doesn't disappear: merit aid (income-blind, estimated per school), and the gap between what you'd comfortably pay and four years of the real total. The plan turns every school into that one number — and the monthly payment it implies — before anyone falls in love with a campus.

The affordability read — every school gets one.

Rutgers at $110–150k · comfort line $25,000/yr
Your comfort line, four years$105,375
Rutgers, four years$147,533
Gap — would be borrowed$42,158
≈ monthly after graduation$556 /mo · 10 yrs

Modeled at Parent PLUS terms. A number a family can veto — that's the point.

The price

$99 / student season Start free
Income-band prices, 3,188 collegesincluded
Auditable admit odds, the 1,791 that publish a rateincluded
Search across all 5,498 colleges in the federal indexincluded
ED/EA strategy, deadlines, the advisor's note all seasonincluded
Residency-split odds, published merit, paperwork gotchas — the top 50 publicsincluded
The Monday deadline digest — dates only, never a newsletterincluded
Spring award-letter decoding — gifts vs loansincluded
Nine guides, each with a live number for your own familyfree
No ads, no data sold to colleges, no lender referralsthe whole business
$99 once. No subscription, no auto-renew, no card required to start. Try it properly first — your first three schools with real numbers, free. Pay only when the plan has already earned it. No college pays us

Fair questions

How accurate are the admit estimates?+
Planning signals, not predictions — anchored to each school's published rate, moved point by point, shown as an honest range. Thin data widens the range and says so.
Does the admit estimate know in-state from out-of-state?+
At 42 of the top 50 public universities, yes — from each school's own Common Data Set, which splits applicants and admits by residency. The gap runs both ways: UNC admits out-of-state applicants at a third the in-state rate; UC Irvine at double. No formula could fake that, so the plan quotes the school's number where it exists and says plainly, everywhere else, that the published rate blends both groups.
Where do the prices come from?+
Federal reporting — colleges report average net price by income band. Share your band once; every school shows that number, labeled with its source.
We make too much for financial aid — is this still useful?+
It was built by a parent in exactly that spot. Above $110k the discounts mostly disappear — and the app says so to your face, school by school, instead of teasing aid that isn't coming. What you get instead: merit likelihood (income-blind), the four-year gap between your comfort line and each school's real total, and the monthly payment that gap implies. The full answer, with numbers →
Is my student's information sold or shared?+
Never. No college pays us for placement, recruitment, or data. The award letters you upload in spring are decoded in your browser and never leave your device. Our entire business is the $99.

Open the plan. See your student's numbers.

Nine questions. Five minutes. Free to start.

Start your plan or open the sample first →